Mrs. Pacman

This is the cake I made for the New Kids on the Blauction at the Law School. It's a charity auction to help fund summer public interest work. I donated a custom cake to the silent auction, and decided to make a display cake for the winner as well. Since it was a 80's themed auction, I thought an 80's themed cake would be appropriate. I really like the little ghost guys. 

The details: Six-inch chocolate cake covered in yellow vanilla butter cream with black icing detail and red sugar sheet bow. Black fondant covered cake board with blue royal icing piping and large sour candy dots. Colored fondant draped over white chocolate rounds for the ghosts. 

This cake was really fun to make. The original plan was to have a Rubik's cube and mixtape as well. The Rubik's cube was a disaster, so I scraped that plan and went with just the Mrs. Pacman. I actually think it's better this way because it would have been too crowded other wise. I am determined to make a Rubik's cube though, so be expecting a post on that not too far away. My other brilliant idea was to have a contest to see if anyone could guess the awesome 80's movie that the mixtape came from. 

I didn't actually make the mixtape cake, but we'll have the contest anyway:

Picture a cassette tape with the words "Cool English Road Tape" on it. The first person to leave a comment/message with the name of the character who made this tape will get a free Valentine's Day cake from me to be enjoyed by you. This contest is open to people everywhere, I have secret cake shipping skills. (Here's a hint: the tape is not shown in the actual movie, but in the deleted scenes.)

Good luck!

Lily Tricks

It's been a while since I've written a post solely dedicated to telling you, dear reader, how my baby is awesome. So here goes. 

Lily is now starting to earn her keep. She has been participating in the National Children's Study for a while, and she makes $10 for each study she's part of. If I were a good parent I would put that money away for her for later or something. But I usually spend it on candy. For myself. She also loves to help around the house. She insists on carrying whatever item I have whenever we go anywhere. This comes in handy when I happen to be carrying a big stinky bag of her diapers. She loves it when I lift her up to the side of the dumpster and she can throw it in. Seriously, it's one of the highlights of her day. Also, she sweeps! This is handy because she makes a humongous mess when she eats. Now at least she helps clean it up. 

She is also a genius. She has figured out that if she wants to climb up onto something, she usually needs to climb up onto a smaller something first. This is both awesome and terrifying. I love watching her scramble up on things, and I try not to laugh when she falls down. But I always come running when there's a big crash that I didn't see. Usually things are ok, but sometimes she needs a hug. Here she is trying to climb on top of the radio. I wonder if she realizes she would have been more successful if she had left all of the hats and scarves in the basket before climbing in. (Side note: Our child does not usually run around the house shirtless. She made an absolute mess of herself at dinner that night so we took the shirt off before she was allowed to leave the table. Three minutes later this happened.)

She is clearly the cutest baby in the history of babies. In case you hadn't noticed that in the previous two pictures, here's one that proves it. Every once in a while she lets me put her hair up in a pony tail or in a clip or something. I keep trying hard to get a picture of it as proof, and this is the first time I was able to. Omigosh I want to squeeze those little cheeks!

I really can't believe how much she's growing and learning ALL the time. She doesn't say any real words yet beyond 'mama' and 'dada', oh and 'nene' for nose. But she does respond very purposefully to everything I say to her. I'll ask her a question and she babbles on for a couple of sentences and then looks at me as if to ask for a response. She clearly thinks she's talking. It's fascinating. Her imaginative play is becoming more sophisticated too. Aside from just mixing things together in her little kitchen, she now chops things and spreads things and pours things and washes her hands and uses the oven mitt. It is so ridiculously cute. She has such determination behind all of her actions these days. Most of the time I have no clue what she's trying to do, but she obviously has a plan and is trying desperately to carry it out. I can't wait until she has the vocabulary to explain some of these things to me. She doesn't sit still long enough to read a lot, but we still try to read as many books as possible each day, even if it's only a couple of pages at a time. She LOVES to dance. And I mean loves. If there is any snippet of music she's moving her feet and swinging her arms and twirling around. And she likes to play the piano as well. She's getting pretty good at pressing individual keys instead of just smashing the keyboard with her whole hand (or face). We might have to get one of those tiny toy pianos with the colored keys so she can play at home and not just at her grandparents' house. 

I guess that's enough gushing for now. Have a great week!

Cookies!

In preparation for the snow, Lily and I baked cookie this morning. It wasn't a complete disaster, and the cookies ended up delicious. First Lily helped me measure and dump and mix all of the ingredients. 

Then she had to taste test several chocolate chips to make sure they were ok. See how sneaky she's  being? You can't even see her mouth. 

This is what the floor around her looked like. I spent the rest of the morning finding and cleaning up tiny flour footprints and handprints all over the apartment. 

"Look mom, I wiped off the table."

Enjoying the results.

Girls Day Out

Before the snow came, it was beautiful this week. So nice, in fact, that Lily and I went to the beach. In January. In Chicago. I thought I was dreaming, but in fact, no. We were actually there. And I have pictures to prove it. 

Not that you could ever tell that was my child except by the hair in her face. I'm at a loss as to what to do here. I don't want to cut her hair and give her a mullet until the age of five, but she will NOT tolerate any clip or hair tie for more than a few minutes at a time unless she gets distracted by something else immediately and forgets about it. It's almost long enough to tuck behind her ears, but when I do that she immediately shakes it out. I think it's just something we'll have to put up with for a while longer, but it sure in annoying. 

Tuesday morning I decided to take Lily down to the Field Museum to get a Mold-o-Rama whale. The museum's Facebook page kindly informed me that it would only be there a few days longer and that I should make sure to get ours soon! So of course I had to. I LOVE those things. They're so cheap and stupid and they last for like a week before they melt or break or something, but I don't know, they're just so FUN. So we hopped on the bus and away we went. 

It's not quite as easy to take the bus with Lily as it used to be. Now we have to take the stroller, I can't just count on carrying her the whole way because she insists on walking sometimes. It's just easier to get her in and out of the stroller than any of the carriers, plus she's getting heavy. The actual traveling is fine, it's the transition from street and stroller to bus and lap that's difficult. I have to take her out of the stroller, set her down, try to keep one hand on her so she doesn't run into traffic while trying to collapse the stroller with the other hand (which is definitely a two-handed job). But I managed. 

After getting our toy, it was so nice out we walked along the lakefront up to the Art Institute. By the time I got there Lily had passed out in her stroller so I got to actually wander around and look at some art. It's been a while since I've been able to do that without chasing her or having to be constantly bouncing up and down so she wouldn't cry. When she woke up we headed down to the cafeteria for lunch where Lily sat in a big girl chair the whole time. 

On the way back she sat in her own seat on the bus, too. She's getting to be such a big girl! Later while lying down with Lily to get her to nap I was thinking about how my mom used to take me downtown and it always made me feel so grown up. When I was little I remember taking the train to Marshall Fields and getting my picture taken with Santa. I don't remember the actual picture part, but I do remember eating a giant cookie in one of their little cafes they had. And I remember walking down the street trying not to be afraid of the giant vents in the ground. I also remember going to the Art Institute during school breaks and when I came home from college. It was always a special day, just the two of us, talking more like friends than mother and daughter. 

This is something that I want to continue to do with my daughter. Really listen to her when she talks so she knows that her ideas are important, let her feel like a grown up, let her be a kid, and somehow manage to be both her friend and her mom. And take the time for just us girls to have fun.

Christmas Photo Dump

Here are our Christmas pictures, finally. Lily's big Christmas gift from me and Joe this year was to re-do her Lily-pad. That's what we call the corner of the living room that contains most of her toys. It had a mish-mash of random baby toys given to us by our parents and friends, some used, some new, mostly plastic. We cleared all that out, gave her a couple of shelves in our big black shelf thing, and re-arranged the toys I decided to keep. 


I understand the appeal of plastic toys, but I love love love wooden and cloth toys. Lily has been really into pretending to cook, so we knew we wanted to get her a little kitchen set. I searched and searched and did a ton of research looking for the perfect one. Then I looked at the prices. Holy cow. Talk about expensive! So then I started scouring Craigslist and tada! We found a super cute little blue wooden kitchen set for a third, A THIRD, of the list price on Amazon. Amazing. Because we got that so cheap we were able to splurge a little and get some of the really nice wooden chopping vegetables, nice dishes made from recycled plastic, and an itty-bitty table and two chairs from IKEA. 


This isn't the greatest picture, but she was moving so fast trying everything out that it was hard to get one that shows her and the space decently. 

Here she's getting ready to pour some tea for Mr. Lion. I still can't get over how cute that is. 

This was the greatest idea ever. She could play at it ALL day. Heck, I could play at it all day with her. She's getting so good at setting things up, mixing things together, and pretending to fill things with water from the tiny tap. I love it and her so much!

I made a Yule Log for dinner at my parents' house Christmas Day evening. It was so delicious. This year I added some ivy vines, and more sprigs of holly. And I love making marzipan mushrooms. I think they're so cute! This is one of the easiest cakes to make and decorate. It looks so fancy in the end, it's totally worth the effort. 

At the end of the week we made our annual trek to Nebraska for Springer Day, a family reunion on my dad's side of the family that happens every year. We stopped at the Herbert Hoover National Historic Site, Iowa State Capitol, Nebraska State Capitol, and the Homestead National Monument so we could stamp in our NPS Passports and Joe's Capitals Passport. It made the two day trip much easier on all of us. 

Joe got me a new camera for Christmas, you may have noticed the higher quality of picture, but more importantly it means the return of the cheesy self photograph! Only now there's three of us instead of just two. I love it. 

We went swimming at a couple of the hotels we stayed at. Lily did not like it the first time, but the second time she warmed up to it. She really likes to wear her bathing suit, though. As soon as you put it on her she starts running in circles all around. 

Nebraska is flat. 

This is Lily's preferred method of travel. Within 10 minutes of just about any car ride she will have removed her hat, mittens, shoes, and one sock. Always only one sock. 

Here's Lily and her great-grandmother, my grandmother at their house in NE. I'm not sure what they're both looking at, but it's a sweet picture I think. 

This picture is from the park near our house. I took Lily out to play in the snow. She like stomping in it, but didn't really want to touch it. I think she's very much a Tucson baby at heart. 

So that was our Christmas. Lots of good food, friends and family. Hope your holidays were just as great!

Happy New Year!

Last year was pretty good, but I'm definitely looking forward to 2012. I'll do the obligatory Christmas post in a couple of days once I go through all the pictures. I've been thinking a lot today and want to get it all out there. Here are my New Year's Resolutions:


1) Exercise for 20 minutes per day. It can be a run, a walk, a motley assortment of crunches and push-ups, or a Yo Gabba Gabba dance party. It doesn't matter. It just has to be for 20 minutes. 


2) Send one letter per week. A friend in Tucson inspired this one. I like getting mail. I like sending mail. And I don't want the USPS to cut services. Therefore, I have resolved to send more actual mail. If you like mail, send me your email address and I'll send you something. 


3) Bake and decorate one thing outside of work per month. I've been pretty much doing this already, but I'm going to officially declare it now. I really want to work on my home cake baking, stacking, and decorating. And working with the tools I have and not spend a ton of money on buying new fun things. Similar to the previous resolution, if you like cake, send me a message and you may get one some month. 


4) Stop living "in the moment". Let me explain this before you get offended.  Because it is not wedding season, I haven't worked for a whole month. I was looking forward to spending a lot of time with Lily getting things ready for Christmas, baking, shopping, decorating, wrapping, the usual holiday affairs. But I also didn't want to be the crazy Target lady with long lists and piles of things to do. So I tried to just "be in the moment" and let things happen as they were want to. We played a bit, we shopped a bit, we did things on a whim. 


That was fun for about two days. It ended up making me crazy. After hanging out with Lily all day I would be super anxious about all the things that I should have done and didn't so that by the time dinner came around I was done. Evenings can be pretty rough as it is, and add on me having a near panic attack each night at dinner was not helping. Then after Joe put Lily to bed I would start with the crazy lists, and doing a million things, and staying up way too late. Also, by trying to make every moment special for Lily, I completely put myself on the back burner. I didn't exercise enough, I didn't eat right, I didn't sleep right. These things do not lead to success. 


I need structure in my life. I need a plan. So I'm getting myself a new planner. I haven't had one in over a year. And I need to be selfish. I need to not say "later" to myself. For my personal sanity I need to exercise. And I need the house to be reasonably neat. So Lily can wait and play by herself for ten minutes after breakfast while I do the dishes and then we'll have a tea party. And she can tolerate being strapped in the stroller all snuggled up in a jacket and mittens and blankets while we run along the lakefront. I think the clean dishes and the Vitamin D will do us both good. 


I know circumstances change, and you can't always (or ever) actually follow a plan, and I'm okay with that. I just need to start with one. 


Happy New Year, y'all!